Hey Tribune, You're Standing in a Puddle

Sigmund Freud wrote about something called "leakage" that happens when unconscious impulses ooze and drip and splatter and spill into daily life. Our Tribune frequently arrives wet from just such leakage, and here's a good example of incontinence in a story published yesterday at Chicagotribune.com and Chicagosports.com:

"The signing (of Vazquez) means that 60 percent of the Sox's rotation — Jon Garland, Jose Contreras and Vazquez — are signed through 2008. Vazquez's signing also increases the likelihood that popular left-hander Mark Buehrle will leave for free agency after the season."

Why does the signing of Vazquez increase the likelihood that Buehrle will leave after the season? Can you think of a reason? Neither can we. And neither, it turns out, can Mark Buerhle, who had this to say later in the day, as quoted in a later story:

"Congrats to Javy," Buehrle said. "I don't think it has any effect on my outlook."

After Buehrle made that comment, the Tribune pulled the earlier story, but the leakage was already out there, splashed all over their khakis.

As one Cubune Watcher pointed out, the Tribune could have spun Vazquez's signing the other way, like this: "The signing solidifies the White Sox pitching staff through 2008, increasing the likelihood that popular left-hander Mark Buerhle will want to re-sign before his current contract expires at the end of this season." The Tribune often spins a signing as a positive incentive for other players to stay with a team... when the Tribune wants to spin positive. But a lot of Tribune writers desperately want to see Mark Buerhle leave the White Sox, for no greater reason than they've already reported, erroneously, that Mark Buehrle is gone.

What better way to save face than to see Mark Buerhle actually leave? Then Mark Gonzales and Dave van Dyck and their ilk can claim to be prescient instead of looking incompetent and unethical.

So we can look forward to a year of the Chicago Tribune showing Mark Buerhle the door at every hint of an opportunity. Likewise, the Tribune has criticized Ken William's pitching acquistions all winter, so we can expect a less than objective Tribune to seize every opportunity to make those young pitchers look bad and to ignore, as much as possible, every game that makes them look good. What fun.

Is it really too much to ask, in a city the size of Chicago, to have a real newspaper staffed by real professionals instead of a tower full of malicious bunglers with investments, both personal and financial, in the exclusive success of the Cubs?